Notices by Glen, waiting for the pre-poll (glent@aus.social)

@steter I live in South Australia, and here it's always been hot. So we're sort of living in the future. There's quite a great deal of letters about preparing for summer. Bushfire action plan. Bushfire preparation checklist. Local government inspections via overhead imagery and vehicle.

Strata managers (aka HOA) get even more, depending on size. Highrise have to be able to show evacuation planning which doesn't put single-occupant cars onto the road and doesn't leave aged residents abandoned.

Design rules are getting tighter all the time. Materials and designs with better Bushfire Attack Level. Water fountains and outdoor shade. Provision for e-bike charging is a current issue, with part of a the concern being shielding them from ember attack whilst storing them away from the main roof of buildings.

The US funds, supplies and trains Pakistan's military. So it is already involved in the latest India - Pakistan conflict.

The US Vice-President has declined to use the resulting leverage:

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks [Pakistan and India] to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it.”

Can't imagine this statement does anything good for US - India relations.

#auspol

@anirvan "what had been the most amazing democracy and economy on the planet"

If you want evidence that the US left has no desire to build back better, the continual US Exceptionalism spouted by them is an indication.

The planet is just as doomed if it is lead by the MAGA or the neoliberals. The only difference is which faction in the US benefits from that demise.

Good news for home batteries
(Now excuse me whilst I have a small cry over installing one last winter).

BTW. Consider 15-20KW for a home. That is, use the rebate to make the battery big enough to have no overnight demand at all, even with the aircon running for a comfortable sleep on a hot summer night.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/home-battery-rebate-hailed-as-most-crucial-consumer-energy-policy-since-rooftop-solar-heres-how-it-will-work/

Last time an international power tried to heavy Australia to remove the PBS Australia lost in court. So we needed the whole country to vote to change the Australian Constitution. Which we did.

These US firms are dreaming. Their actions will simply stoke anti-US sentiment and lead to the sort of buyer's strike currently being conducted by the people of Canada.

"Australia defends Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as US companies urge Trump to impose reciprocal tariffs"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-19/australia-defends-pbs-us-pharma-urges-reciprocal-tariffs/105072750

#auspol

I know eggs are expensive, but if I could share a little hard-won life advice: owning chickens is even more expensive. Do not think "Well I'll just grow my own."

Catching up on a few days of Japanese news. That included 3.11, with the current estimate of the cost of the Fukushima incident being US$190B.

#auspol

@steter I wonder if there is a policykit configuration which will make that go away for someone logged in at the console

@kenshirriff not sure it was IBM's innovation. Flower's Colossus was built on UK Post Office phone system relay frames. The ability to move the computer also being the rationale, in this case from the Post Office Research Station to Bletchley Park.

@davidaugust here's a packing list Australian kids in primary school (US: elementary school) use when learning about fire evacuation. It's prepared by a state fire agency:

https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/449/Emergency_Kit.pdf

Best of luck to you all!

@mattblaze @SteveBellovin There are some tiny "continue application online" links at the bottom of the page text, which finally lead to this page

https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-travel-authorisation/how-to-apply

(Edit: it's clear what is going on here technically. They want the applicant to use the app so they can check that the applicant's issued passport is an ePassport. That lowers the risk of the applicant arriving at Heathrow and then being detained and returned to the originating airport. So the escape route to the web application is very poorly marked.)

@sindarina Similarly there is a test/documentation range for USB IDs:

0x1d50:0x5200 through to 0x1d50:0x52ff

https://vk5tu.livejournal.com/53240.html

That John Howard lied about going to war is as much a surprise as it will be when we learnt that Donald Trump letches on the junior women White House staff.

#auspol

Arrrgh. Wikipedia is not short of money. It is short of supporters, mostly because kindness and listening are not its organisational virtues, and so it tends to hack off the people who would otherwise support it the most effectively.

Eg: You are a world expert. You clarify some text in the entry of your expertise. I'd say it takes less than ten times of doing this before you swear off helping Wikipedia forever.

American tourist stopped at Australian Customs

Customs: are you carrying any prohibited items?

Tourist: no

Customs: "What about the gun in your bag?"

Tourist in deep shit: "Oh yeah, I forgot about that."

Then our US tourist digs the hole deeper:

- claimed she brought the gun for protection [and the license for that use is where? Gun licenses for the reason of protection are rarely granted to individuals]

- asked where she planned to store the gun while she was in Australia, she indicated under a vehicle’s passenger seat [Australia has strict specifications for gun storage]

- claims she would not shoot anyone but "I would probably just pistol whip" [carrying an blunt force instrument for use as a weapon is also illegal]

In the ultimate irony, she came to Australia to go to clown school.

12 months jail, the first 4 months of that to be full time. Then she'll be deported never to return. She'll now need a visa to travel most places, and many countries will deny a visa for a person with a firearms smuggling offence.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/09/us-woman-caught-with-golden-gun-in-luggage-at-sydney-airport-jailed-for-a-year-ntwnfb

@swacknificent @inthehands @scott @blogdiva There are over a million e-bikes sold in the USA each year. This program will fund 1,500 e-bikes. So yeah, if you want one then be quick with the mouse on launch day.

@dangillmor US tech firms have been very flippant about the social harm they do. So naturally governments are going to intervene. Typically, the Australian government has chosen the worst possible option.

That's partly because the Australian Public Service is too deskilled to understand the problem, partly because Murdoch wants to use the Australian Government as a club to beat Facebook (Facebook have stopped paying Murdoch for use of news content).

But the era of tech firms hiding behind a peculiar US definition of "free speech", and behind "Section 230" is over. Social networks are a curated platform, its publishers are responsible for the content they republish, and governments are on a search to find ways to make that responsibility stick even when the tech firms try to escape that responsibility by playing jurisdictional games.

@floatybirb @thomasfuchs Having travelled a bit, maybe it's more important for public transport to be free if the society has no culture of public transport.

Japan's trains and buses can be private because people will catch them anyways. It's more convenient than owning a car most of the time. For a start, you've got to prove you have off-road parking for the car.

But in the US public transport has to compete with cars -- who don't pay for their externalities from parking to CO2 emissions. Reducing those externalities alone covers the provision of public transport from an economic point of view, the question is one of finance.

An.illustratiom of why all these data leaks matter.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1796640601431027979.html

Basically, when an organisation collects too much data about you, it's enabling criminals to steal your money and wreck the lives of people.

@mattblaze @SteveBellovin @karlauerbach Even though the departure could not be secret, there was could be tight security.

Napoleon famously kept the destination of his Mediterranean invasion fleet secret, to inhibit pursuit by the Royal Navy, with its faster warship-only fleet. Nelson sailed back and forth across the Med, catching news of where Bonaparte had been, only catching up with the French fleet after they had already disembarked Napoleon and his army in Alexandria, from where they rapidly conquered Egypt (a complex power play to separate India from Britian, the plunder of India paying for the British forces in the Napoleonic Wars).

Then, being Nelson, he wiped out the warships of the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile despite the French pre-prepared and advantageous position. (The streets of my Port Adelaide -- an Empire maritime town -- are named after this battle, it was widely admired as his technically best victory.)

Anyways, it's clear what a difference even one telegram could have made, and why the British Empire paid such large sums for undersea cables, initially of short life.